Monday, November 15, 2004

Homecoming royalty: a meme 

Via Cold Spring Shops and Tongue Tied, I read this morning that another school has decided to pitch the idea of homecoming queens as gender-specific. At least in their case you could argue that the reason was noble -- they wanted to give everyone an equal chance to win a scholarship.

"I think it's great the UW has chosen to have a nongender-specific homecoming royalty," said Sumida, 20, a communication major and graduate of Seattle's Roosevelt High School. "In our day and age, a lot of the traditional definitions of roles are changing, and this follows in line with that. Once people realize that this is not just a popularity contest but one based on qualifications, they'll hopefully understand and accept it."

Sumida and Cho were crowned Monday at a private reception. Jenni Backes, ASUW director of programming, said the student group is catching some flak about the change.

Fine, then let's simply do away with the concept of homecoming "royalty" and just use homecoming to give scholarships to deserving students. In the case of SCSU, however, that would require giving up the bully pulpit nightgown of political correctness.



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